Dear CCP Games and Capsuleers,
The Italian gaming community loves EVE Online but is deeply frustrated by the lack of an Italian translation.
Italy, the 9th largest gaming market globally, has thousands of potential players eager to explore New Eden.
However, the absence of localization is a major barrier, especially for those with only basic English skills.EVE Online’s complex mechanics and technical terms (e.g., “Titan class ships,” “PvP sovereignty,” or “market hubs”) are daunting for players with school-level English.
Many Italians, despite their passion for the game, struggle to enjoy it fully or give up entirely due to the language barrier.
The existing Italian tutorial translation is a start, but it’s not enough players need a fully localized interface, missions, and core content to thrive.
Modern AI translation tools like Lara (by Translated, trained on 25M professional translations) and TextCortex (capable of translating 20,000 words accurately) offer a game-changing solution. These tools can localize EVE Online quickly and at a fraction of traditional costs, with human review to ensure quality.
Even an imperfect AI translation would be far better than none, opening the game to a huge Italian audience.
Benefits of Italian localization:
Unlock thousands of new players in a vibrant gaming market.
Make EVE Online accessible to Italians with basic English skills.
Use AI to cut translation costs and speed up the process.
CCP, please consider AI-driven localization to bring EVE Online to Italy.
We’re ready to join the stars!
Fly safe,
Ernest Queller
Edit: We’re also discussing this topic on Reddit, feel free to join there too: Reddit - The heart of the internet
Why “AI-Powered”? I barely speak my native English, I wouldn’t like some robot telling me how to speak. Actually, I created a game chat engine once that roughly translated 7 different languages. No matter what language people typed the message would translate to the viewer’s chosen language. It was written in Python yet no game company ever picked it up. It basically used a set of dictionaries like a spell checker. I think I made it back in 2008? So you would think, by now someone could do far better.
AI translation of EVE. AI translating a game about human interaction instead of humans translating the game. Only Pastas can come up with this kind of lunacy.
AI translation full of hallucinations, wrongly translated typical phrases, inconsistencies and imperfections would cause more confusion and unwanted mistakes than the school level English of Italians playing now.
I have a counterproposal: Start a Kickstarter or GoFundMe to get a team of real, professional translators to translate EVE properly and correctly. This way you get a good translation by humans for a game about human interaction, you support your local economy, and you do not waste the potential of EVE by supporting AI scams.
Hello Dyver, thank you for your feedback!
I understand your concern about IA errors in a game like EVE, which is based on human interaction. However, new artificial intelligence technologies, such as Lara (trained on 25 million translations) and TextCortex, have made significant strides in recent years, offering increasingly accurate and adaptable translations, especially with continuous improvements over time.
This is not a “folly,” but an opportunity: even an initial imperfect translation would open New Eden to thousands of Italians who currently cannot even access the game in its early stages due to technical terms (“Titan class ships,” “sov mechanics”) and complex language incomprehensible with school-level English.
Italy, the 9th largest gaming market worldwide (projected to grow to $31.46 billion by 2028), deserves this chance.
Games like Genshin Impact (15% more satisfied Italian users), Final Fantasy XIV (30% time saved, 75-80% approval), and Hades II (70-80% satisfaction with ModelWiz) prove that IA works, with improvements via feedback.
An initial localization with AI would allow new players to start, refining quality over time through community input.
No one expects everything at once, and it’s not a human replacement, but a bridge for accessibility. CCP, consider AI as a first step!
Fly safe,
Ernest Queller
AI translation and then community input or even community aided localization? This is the perfect recipe for disaster, as numerous failed AI translation and Community-led translation projects have shown in the past.
If it deserves this chance, you should not waste it with poor AI translation and instead use humans who know what they are doing. AI is not a first step into the right direction, it’s several steps backwards as it does not create a good user experience, it only causes frustration and confusion because of all the mistakes, and it creates more work and costs for the company.
I understand the frustration with past AI translation failures and the risk of poor user experience these are valid points.
However, my opinion is that AI technology has improved dramatically in recent years. Modern AI models like Lara and TextCortex, trained on millions of translations and continuously improved by community feedback, can now produce much better results than before.
Using AI as a first step is not about replacing professional translators or delivering perfect translations immediately. Rather, it’s a practical way to lower the entry barrier for many Italian players who currently struggle to access the game due to complex technical language and limited English skills.
Community involvement is key: after an initial AI-assisted translation, human players can review and improve the text, making it better over time. This collaborative approach has worked well for other games and projects.
Regarding your point on costs and workload, I believe that starting with AI actually helps reduce initial localization costs and invites the community to actively contribute turning potential frustration into constructive engagement.
Of course, this is my opinion, but I think it’s worth trying rather than leaving the Italian market underserved.
I see how they have “improved” every day in my work. They have not improved at all in areas that really matter: consistency, reliability, terminology.
You also want to “involve the community” by virtue of slave labor. They should test and fix the mess that AI has provided for free and CCP can profit off of this work. Plus, community translations regularly receive poor feedback from the endusers because normal players have no clue what translation and localization actually entails.
Everything you say is textbook AI bro talk that follows the flawed and overzealous crypto bros manual. It has no substance and no bearing in reality. It’s nothing but pipe dreams on the back of actually hard working people that have to fix the mess that comes from these hallucinations.
is there a hidden rule on the forum that states “every proposal, no matter how innocuous, must be interpretated in the worst possible way and viciously trashed until it has ceased to exist”?
I bet if you put chatGPT to the task, it would cover 95% of the entire game just fine. Could even let it do the voice overs too.
Not that CCP will ever bother to do any of this, but wow, you need to calm down.
Not at all. I have no issues with the English client, and I wouldn’t switch to an Italian client even if they made it. And I don’t really know guys who have a problem with using limited English on a computer unless they’re over 70 years old either. So, I don’t know who these people are who can’t use the English client. Not saying it wouldn’t make things more comfortable for some, but I don’t really think it’s that big of an issue.
I completely understand your frustration, and I don’t want to minimize negative experiences like the ones you described they are unacceptable.
But unfortunately, those behaviors aren’t exclusive to the Italian community; they can be found anywhere.
The goal of localization is not to “import toxicity,” but to offer an entry point for people who would otherwise not even get through the tutorial.
Many new Italian players give up after just a few hours, not because they’re not motivated, but because they can’t navigate a complex interface in a language they don’t fully understand. Providing them with a localized base doesn’t mean encouraging bad behavior — it simply means giving new players a chance.
I don’t want to lock EVE into a single language or culture, but to open it intelligently to as many users as possible. That’s how you build a bigger, stronger, and healthier community: by giving people tools, not putting up barriers.
After reading and discussing various opinions about Italian localization for EVE Online, I would like to add some reflections and additional reasons in favor of this initiative.
Cultural value and inclusivity
EVE is a vast and global universe that should welcome players of all languages and cultures. It is not about replacing English, but about expanding access and participation, allowing more people to enjoy the experience without unnecessary language barriers.
Accessibility for new players
Many new Italian players quit EVE in the early hours not because they are not interested in the gameplay, but because they struggle with a complex interface in English. A basic AI translation for tutorials, user interface, and initial missions would drastically lower this barrier.
I say this from personal experience as well: I am a 60 year old adult and, despite my enthusiasm and passion, I have found the interface and texts in English challenging. I am not a beginner, but even for me, the language barrier was discouraging. I would really like to play EVE, but I can’t fully enjoy it precisely because of the initial language barrier.
Positive experiences in other languages
EVE is already localized in German, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, and it works well even in those complex contexts. This shows it is possible to support non-English speaking communities without compromising the social and political depth of the game.
Technological innovations to reduce costs
Localization costs have often been a barrier, but today AI tools like Lara and TextCortex offer an affordable and scalable way to start with partial localization, improving over time with community contributions.
A bridge, not a barrier
The goal is not to create a separate or closed world for Italian players, but to build an access bridge that allows more people to enter, learn, grow, and actively participate in the universe of New Eden. Once inside, social and political interaction, which remains fundamentally in English, can continue to be the beating heart of the experience.
Fly safe o7
Localization is the opposite of inclusivity. When you isolate people into sub groups they do not interact. Keeping everyone on English makes everyone interact.
Localization prevents Person A from Playing with Person B, unless they have the same localized client, because they can not tell each other with button to click on, and when Person A wants to mention Aura they in fact need to say レディブルー for Person B to understand who they talk about.
And yes, localizers are stupid enough they always start translate names.
This also goes for GUI buttons, error messages etc, making it much much harder to overcome any language barrier when helping people. Even if you don’t understand a word a person is saying, as long as you get the English error message, you can often provide a chain of English buttons for them to click on to get rid of their issue. Once localized, you can only get help from local people experiencing the same error, vastly reducing the amount of helpers as well as likelihood for the error to have been experienced and known.
AI translating a game about human interaction instead of humans translating the game. Only Pastas can come up with this kind of lunacy.